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Garbed in metallic-sheen pants worthy of a space traveller, Downie looks like he was sent from the future to breathe fire into the congested mazes and tumbleweed patches of Canada, one rhyming couplet at a time.

But the GD Break, sadly, is about the past.

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It is about giving fans a chance to say goodbye. It is about the national heartbreak that crystallized on that wretched day in May when we learned what we still can’t believe: Gord has incurable brain cancer? What?

It is about premature catharsis and overdue gratitude. It is about celebrating the pensive frontman, the poet laureate who for three decades transformed into a kinetic dynamo on stage — ranting, dancing, flailing, wailing, inflicting violence upon mic stands — while belting out songs that are now welded to the coming-of-age experiences of a generation that lucked out when The Hip claimed the mantle as chief contributor to the soundtrack of their lives.

This is not just a rock band. The Hip is spring-loaded into our national identity. This is why the final concert on Saturday night, in hometown Kingston, will be broadcast live on the CBC. It’s why there will be viewing parties across the country. It’s why Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will attend. It’s why nothing else will matter and for millions of Canadians tuning in around the world — at home, at bars, at public screenings, at the Olympics in Rio — time will stop.

The band that has touched the hearts of a nation started out as some high school pals conspiring in a basement over 30 years ago.

This relationship between a million hearts and Downie’s singularly fertile mind was not forged in a cynical marketing suite. It happened at bonfires and skating rinks, at campsites and campuses. It happened during first loves and final exams, birthdays and weddings and breakups. It happened with old friends and new beginnings. And it happened because high school pals conspired in a basement more than 30 years ago and then punched out five straight No. 1 albums in the ’90s.

Road Apples, Fully Completely, Day for Night, Trouble at the Henhouse, Phantom Power — the music grabbed listeners by the ears with snarling licks and catchy hooks and vivid lyrics fans can still recite word for word now that the road trips with friends have given way to family vacations with the kids.

Most bands make music. The Hip made memories.

I can still see my younger brother sitting at the breakfast table, spooning Frosted Flakes into his mouth, while mumbling Downie’s “Killer Whale Tank” improvised rant immortalized mid-song in a live version of “New Orleans is Sinking.”

I will never forget listening to “Flamenco” on a loop in bed one day when I was deliriously sick and worried about what I was going to do with my life. Downie’s spare and tender verse — “Flamenco, sweep the air / And weave the sun / And stamp your feet for everyone” — made me weep into my pillow.

Sigmund Freud once said, “Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.” If true, this may explain why Hip fans are among the sanest music lovers on the planet. Downie’s lyrics can be more cryptic than Finnegans Wake astranslated into cipher by the Zodiac killer.

Is “Fireworks” about the ’72 Summit Series or domestic strife or the ephemeral flashpoints of postmodern existence? Is “Bobcaygeon” about a spiritual awakening under the stars near the Trent-Severn Waterway or a historic riot or an insubordinate horse? If you can lovingly tolerate, “It’s minus 11 / Inside my kettle / I didn’t come to get lost in the Barrens / I didn’t come to settle,” you already know a Hip song is by nature a Rorschach test: it means what you want it to mean.

In a strident culture, where so many cling to an opinion before they hear the issue, ambiguity can be a virtue. Downie does not get enough credit for the thinking and daydreaming he unleashed.

The conventional wisdom is that The Hip is “quintessentially” Canadian, a band that nailed time and place by sprinkling north-of-the-border references — Bill Barilko, David Milgaard, the FLQ crisis — while name-checking towns from coast to coast.

But jingoism was never part of the equation.

Listen to every track on the 14 studio albums and you will hear so much more than true north romanticism. You will hear musicians outgrow truck-stop blues in pursuit of more complex arrangements. You will hear a band carve out a unique perch in the sonic taxonomy by pairing a natural instinct for raging chord changes with an increasingly refined sense of tempo and melody. You will hear a singer who modelled his early stage presence on Howlin’ Wolf and then discovered it was not always wise to pull the pin and chuck every vocal grenade at the rafters.

More explosive power could be detonated with restraint.

This growth is detectable on the band’s five albums of the ’00s: Music @ Work, In Violet Light, In Between Evolution, World Container and We Are the Same. And it’s rendered in high contrast on Downie’s solo work, especially between 2001’s Coke Machine Glow and The Grand Bounce nine years later, a charming showcase of his expanding range and ability to kick up the register with vaguely Orbison flourishes. “The East Wind,” “Moon Over Glenora,” “As a Mover” — these are songs for the soul.

Perseverance, courage, acceptance, leaving nothing behind, so many Hip themes now ironically apply to the band in this time freighted with red-line emotion. As the boys lurch from city to city — Victoria, Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, London, Toronto, Hamilton and Ottawa, toward Saturday’s finale in Kingston — they are also in uncharted rock territory.

We are mourning a demigod who is still with us.

That’s what makes the GD Break so hard to behold. It’s like a climactic scene in a tragic film in which the hero is blindsided by a cruel fate. In an already brutal year for music, including the deaths of Prince and David Bowie, now a terminally ill national treasure is performing on what amounts to a farewell tour?

If that’s how this story ends, if no miracle is forthcoming, Canada will lose more than just a beloved rock band that infiltrated our hearts by staying true to their own. We will also lose a bit of glue and a lot of magic. We will lose a cultural barometer, a rousing merchant of lore, a storytelling machine, a bridge to the past and the promise of what was to come.

The genius of Downie was that it always felt like he was just getting started.

So on Saturday, if the pattern holds, a moment will come when he is alone on stage. He will wave. He will place a hand over his heart. He will flash a peace sign. He will point and nod and blow air kisses to nobody and everyone. He will hold out his fists with stoic resolve like they are gripping the steering wheel of a skidding car. He will offer his fans and his country a brave smile.

And in that moment, frozen in time, we will blink back tears and promise never to forget.

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